Thomas Fleming Jr., A Library Expert, 83

Published: March 6, 1992

Thomas P. Fleming Jr., a library expert who specialized in scientific and medical material, died on Monday at his home in Leonia, N.J. He was 83 years old.

He died after a three-year respiratory illness, his family said.

Mr. Fleming had been the chief of Medical Sciences Libraries at Columbia University and a professor in its School of Library Science and College of Physicians and Surgeons.

He was born in Massillon, Ohio. He earned a bachelor's degree in 1929 and a master's in biology in 1932, both from Western Reserve University. He went to work at the University of Minnesota Libraries in 1934.

An early advocate of medical librarian training, he moved to Columbia in 1937 to become head librarian at the medical school. In 1944 he became assistant director of Columbia's libraries and was in charge of reader services. He was made a library science professor in 1948, chief of Biological Sciences Libraries in 1949 and a medical school professor in 1950. He retired in 1972.

In 1946 he was designated a brigadier general on a mission for the Library of Congress to get Germany's wartime scientific publications.

He was a leader in adapting modern technology and worked on a computer project in 1965 to cross-index the Columbia, Yale and Harvard libraries.

His wife, the former Ilene Evans, died in 1989.

He is survived by two sons, David S., of Leonia and Thomas E., of Springfield, Va.; four grandchildren, and one great-granddaughter.